5 Best Stories You Might Have Missed This Week

5 Best Stories You Might Have Missed This Week

Posted by Laura Heaton on March 19, 2010

Here at Enough, we often swap emails with interesting articles and feature stories that we come across in our favorite publications and on our favorite websites. We wanted to share some of these stories with you as part of our effort to keep you up to date on what you need to know in the world of anti-genocide and crimes against humanity work.

What has the $15 million directed by the Canadian government toward the epidemic of sexual violence in Congo accomplished? Little, argues this article by The Globe and Mail’s Geoffrey York. Featuring insights of Congolese human rights leader Justine Masika Bihamba, York describes the bureaucratic and administrative black hole into which much of the funding intended to prevent sexual violence and rehabilitate victims disappears. For example:

An internal Canadian government report … concluded that Canada was spending too much money on T-shirts, vests, caps, cardboard folders and gaudy posters while failing to make progress on the bigger issues of prevention and justice. Ms. Bihamba chuckled grimly as she described the foreign- aid projects. The simple problem with the campaign, she said, is that most perpetrators of sexual violence are illiterate – they can’t read the printed messages.

Genocide in Darfur, political oppression, and international justice – these are all themes inherently part of Sudan’s hip hop music. Even when it isn’t election season, this burgeoning music scene is discreet, reports AFP’s Guillaume Lavallee from Khartoum. But the artists find ways to express themselves. "If there are songs that speak the truth, I sing them in French," one rapper said, instead of Sudan’s native Arabic.

Enough’s Maggie Fick and Justice Africa’s Neha Erasmus had a stimulating debate hosted by the Making Sense of Sudan blog on the topic of how to portray experiences, challenges, and daily life in Sudan within the U.S. advocacy movement.

The latest edition of the Voices on Genocide Prevention podcast series features an interview with New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof. Host Bridget Conley-Zilkic poses some difficult questions, such as asking Kristof to respond to the criticism that the Darfur advocacy movement in the United States oversimplified the story of Darfur or created the expectation among Darfuris that the international community would “come in and save them in a way that didn’t happen.”

Refugees International’s Erin Weir and U.N. Dispatch’s Mark Goldberg discuss Weir’s upcoming trip to southern Sudan in this bloggingheads.tv diavlog. Their engaging chat covers many of the major challenges confronting the North and the South this year, and in particular addresses the deficiencies of the U.N. mission in the South, which Weir will be evaluating during her visit.